stray_r
stray_r t1_j9ska61 wrote
Reply to TIL that the reason Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap and called it 'macaroni' was because at one time macaroni was slang for something very fashionable or trendy by elephantsgraveyard
Macaroni was what we would now call a queer identity, growing out of moll house culture.
stray_r OP t1_iva48ia wrote
Reply to Yorkshire bus company receives fine from council - after one of their buses is caught in a bus lane by stray_r
Also Leeds, paid for motorcycle parking on advance, couldn't use the carpark because the number plate recognition only works on the front of vehicles.
The person replying to my email about that was a director of the parking service and gave me several abusive phone calls about how it's illegal to remove the front number plate from a motorcycle. In the UK it's illegal to show one on the front of a motorcycle made after a certain date.
stray_r OP t1_iva3n5r wrote
Reply to comment by Gnace1er in Yorkshire bus company receives fine from council - after one of their buses is caught in a bus lane by stray_r
In Sheffield, motorcycles are allowed in all the bus lanes, apart from 3 specific stretches where it's busses only at certain times of the day and open to all vehicles the rest of the time. Sheffield calls these bus's gates which aren't in the highway code and doesn't sign these differently, and doesn't sign motorcycles allowed explicitly in enough of their bus lanes for the lack of a list of allowed vehicles to be permitted. You just have to know, presumably from getting a fine.
Obviously these things make the councils too much money.
stray_r OP t1_iva2jn1 wrote
Reply to comment by LastLabourGovernment in Yorkshire bus company receives fine from council - after one of their buses is caught in a bus lane by stray_r
I first tried about 8 hours before this was accepted and it got eaten by an automated filter because I used the share button on my phone and it changed the title slightly. It was posted and autoremoved and blocked everything else. Reddit's built-in filters are a bit fragile. I've hounded the mods here enough over this though.
stray_r t1_j9sp3hq wrote
Reply to comment by elephantsgraveyard in TIL that the reason Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap and called it 'macaroni' was because at one time macaroni was slang for something very fashionable or trendy by elephantsgraveyard
Ok, was on mobile, didn't see link destination, didn't click through. Guilty of crimes against the internet.
If we taught history properly in schools, we'd be saying that the british were hurling queerphobic slurs at the colonies and they owned it so hard by running with it and kicking the british empire out.
It's important to note that in 1770, buggery was a capital offence in the british empire. (No it's not a term of affection. If you see british people using it as a term of affection on tv, it's a very british and particularly squaddie behaviour of greeting close friends with vile insults. A millennial equivalent observed in the wild is ||whatup douchenuggets||) We don't get the level of self identity we do where it's legally protected. But there's plenty of homophobic and enbyphobic hate recorded in the 1770s.
I think macaroni was more widely "fashion inspired by" rather than exclusively queer culture, but it's the highly visible Ru Paul's Drag Race to the much more underground queer clubs in every city.
I wish things like this were taught in history classes, people might see the queer community as something that's always been here, rather than something that's "new" due to internet exposure and a period of relative safety in existing publicly in some places.